Acoustic resonators can be used to implement signal processing functions in various electronic applications. For example, some cellular phones and other communication devices use acoustic resonators to implement frequency filters for transmitted and/or received signals. Several different types of acoustic resonators can be used according to different applications, with examples including bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators such as thin film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs), coupled resonator filters (CRFs), stacked bulk acoustic resonators (SBARs), double bulk acoustic resonators (DBARs), and solidly mounted resonators (SMRs). An FBAR, for example, includes a piezoelectric layer between a bottom (first) electrode and a top (second) electrode over a cavity. BAW resonators may be used in a wide variety of electronic applications, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), electronic gaming devices, laptop computers and other portable communications devices. For example, FBARs operating at frequencies close to their fundamental resonance frequencies may be used as a key component of radio frequency (RF) filters and duplexers in mobile devices.
An acoustic resonator typically comprises a layer of piezoelectric material sandwiched between two plate electrodes in a structure referred to as an acoustic stack. Where an input electrical signal is applied between the electrodes, reciprocal or inverse piezoelectric effect causes the acoustic stack to mechanically expand or contract depending on the polarization of the piezoelectric material. As the input electrical signal varies over time, expansion and contraction of the acoustic stack produces acoustic waves that propagate through the acoustic resonator in various directions and are converted into an output electrical signal by the piezoelectric effect. Some of the acoustic waves achieve resonance across the acoustic stack, with the resonant frequency being determined by factors such as the materials, dimensions, and operating conditions of the acoustic stack. These and other mechanical characteristics of the acoustic resonator determine its frequency response.
In general, an acoustic resonator comprises different lateral regions that may be subject to different types of resonances, or resonance modes. These lateral regions can be characterized, very broadly, as a main membrane region and peripheral regions, where the active region or main membrane region is defined, roughly, by an overlap between the two plate electrodes and the piezoelectric material, and the peripheral regions are defined as areas outside the main membrane region. The main membrane region may be the same as an active region of the acoustic resonator, or may contain the active region. Two peripheral regions, in particular, are defined as a region located between the edge of the main membrane region and edge of the air-cavity, and a region of an overlap of at least one plate electrode and the piezoelectric material with the substrate. The main membrane region is subject to electrically excited modes generated by the electric field between the two plate electrodes, and both the main membrane and the peripheral regions are subject to certain derivative modes generated by scattering of energy in the electrically excited modes. The electrically excited modes comprise, for instance, a piston mode formed by longitudinal acoustic waves with boundaries at the edges of the main membrane region. The derivative modes comprise, for instance, lateral modes formed by lateral acoustic waves excited at the edges of the main membrane region and the peripheral regions.
The lateral modes facilitate continuity of appropriate mechanical particle velocities and stresses between the electrically driven main membrane region and the essentially non-driven peripheral regions. They can either propagate freely (so called propagating modes) or exponentially decay (so called evanescent and complex modes) from the point of excitation. They can be excited both by lateral structural discontinuities (e.g., an interface between regions of different thicknesses in the main membrane region, or an edge of a top or bottom electrode) or by electric field discontinuities (e.g., an edge of a top electrode where the electric field is terminated abruptly).
The lateral modes generally have a deleterious impact on the performance of an acoustic resonator. Accordingly, some acoustic resonators include ancillary structural features designed to suppress, inhibit, or mitigate the lateral modes. For example, an air-bridge may be formed under the top electrode on the top electrode connecting edge of the acoustic resonator in order to eliminate the transducer effect over the substrate. In another example, a frame may be formed by a conductive or dielectric material within the boundary of the main membrane region to minimize scattering of electrically excited piston mode at top electrode edges and improve confinement of mechanical motion to the main membrane region.
Conventional FBARs, for example, rely on strong confinement of electrically excited piston mode. Strong confinement is provided by the edges of the top and bottom electrodes, as well as ancillary structural features, such as air-rings (e.g., including air-bridges and/or air-wings) and conventional outside frames. While the apparent advantage of strong confinement is that it enforces quasi-clamping of mechanical motion at the edge of the top electrode, it also provides significant acoustic discontinuities, leading to scattering of energy out of the desired piston mode into undesired extensional, shear, flexural and dilatational modes of the whole structure.
In addition, FBAR filters in particular need to guarantee sufficiently low insertion loss (IL) across temperature ranges, as well as frequency ranges. Typically, as ambient temperature increases, sound velocity of most materials decreases and the cutoff frequency of each of the FBARs forming the filter decreases. Thus, as the temperature increases, the pass-band of the filter generally moves towards lower frequencies. Therefore, in the absence of temperature compensation, the pass-band must be designed wide enough to allow for changes of the ambient temperature, requiring a high coupling coefficient Kt2 of each FBAR, which may be difficult to achieve. Also, in some cases (e.g., Band 13), the pass-band may not be allowed to move to prevent encroachment on other (e.g. safety) bands. Temperature compensation of the filter (and therefore each FBAR) may be required. For example, boron-doped silicon oxide SiOx (which may be referred to as “tempco oxide”) may be added as a temperature compensating layer to the FBAR. The sound velocity of tempco oxide increases with temperature, which yields the desired stabilization of acoustic resonator and filter response with changes in ambient temperature. The temperature compensating layer may be embedded into either top or bottom electrode, with all the associated process complications. Other structures may then be used to improve parallel resistance Rp and quality factor Q (referred to as “Q-factor”), such as top electrode air-bridges (to eliminate dead-FBAR) and add-on frames on top electrode (to minimize scattering at the top electrode edges).
Typically, the temperature compensating layer lowers the effectiveness of add-on frames used for Q-factor improvement. The reason is that low acoustic impedance of the temperature compensating layer confines a significant amount of energy both from the piston mode and from stack eigenmodes that are confined to the part of the resonator stack where the temperature compensating layer is placed. The typical add-on frames are placed on the top of the stack in order to facilitate growth of high-quality planar piezoelectric layer. The temperature compensating layer may be placed either below or above the piezoelectric layer, which limits the effectiveness of top add-on frames on suppressing the eigen-modes confined to the bottom of the resonator stack. Thus, approaches allowing for temperature compensating layers within a BAW resonator stack are needed for applications requiring high Q-factor and temperature compensated frequency response. Accordingly, in view of these and other shortcomings of conventional acoustic resonators, there is a general need for improved acoustic resonator designs.